Wow.

Okay last  updated this blog was I was in Karala.  I had seen all these amazing  food forests growing on the steep hillsides with 100 plus species of plants growing and then found out that where a lot of people were still using some cow manure for fertilizer almost everyone was using chemical pesticides and fungicides and I do not know about herbicides.   At that time I had not figured out how to walk down onto the slopes and thought that they were not terraced. 

I had been told about a tribe  near Karala  who were working their 1000 year old food forest.  I was told that the only way I could see this food forest was to contact the college at Thiesseur.  Everyway I tried to contact this college was failing and it was a 5 hour bus ride one way over all these hills which is not an easy bus ride.   I had connected with a priest near where I was staying in Katapanna and he had connected with another priest near a group of tribal folk and off we went to visit that food forest.  Only problem was that the priest who lived near the tribe had not conveyed to the priest who lived near where I was staying that this particular tribe had not maintained their food forest and there were just several families doing some harvesting.  It turned out to be a lovely day anyway as the rickshaw driver was great at stopping and walking down into all the food forests along the way and telling me what he knew which was considerable.  The watering systems are flood irrigation with terracing and channels to get the water down the hills.  We found rubber trees.  They make a hole in the tree just like we did back in New Hampshire for maple syrup and attach via a string ½ coconut husk to the tree.  Then when the rubber accumulates they take the liquid back and pore in some kind of acid and it then turns white and thick and they pour it in a mold, let it set and then hang it on lines to dry.  In the distance it looks like diapers hanging on a line.  This is then sent off to a rubber processing plant.

I was ecstatic to finally walk around in the food forests and still really wanted to be able  to talk to the Indian farmers.  That night I asked spirit for help and the answer came immediately.  That acupuncturist office that you saw, go there tomorrow and talk to that person.  So I went and met Joshua.  It turns out that he is a very seriously into health and that means healthy food for all of India as well as treating folks with acupuncture.   He was trained with a masters degree and was doing a high level job in IT which the Indians have special abilities for.   He had a severe motor cycle accident and the ineptitudes (and sometimes chicanery) of the medical professionals treating him caused him one of those life crises where he decided to get trained  to provide real health care.   Like most holistic doctors he sees a relationship between the vibrancy of the food we eat and our own health.   The long and short of it is that Joshua, his wife, maybe his father and I soon became a team.  He loves his home state which is Tamil Nada.  Where he lives is about 2 hours from the hills and food forests of Karala down in a valley which is between the mountains which run on both the east and west side of India.  The weather here is very interesting.  It never gets cold and it never gets really hot.   Meaning it stays between 70 and 85 degrees, an ideal climate for growing a lot of plants.

He set up tours for me with farmers in Tamil Nadu, the same state as Auroville, but an overnight drive away and over the mountains.   The farmers here are digging bore wells to get to water for the crops and almost all of them are using a lot of chemicals.   This was not the case in the past but with dams and rerouting rivers and less monsoons this is how they are solving the water problem.  Only thing is that they digging new bore wells every 2 years because the historic waters are going farther and farther down.  The bore wells cost at a minimum 1600 dollars and many farmers can no longer afford to build new ones. 

I had been visiting all these farms in Auroville, and then gone up to visit the farm of Buskar Save as well as the Save Farm.  In all of these places there were water problems which they had solved and of course all my permaculture studies with key lines, swales, etc and my interest over many years in dry land farming now came to a focus.  What I knew was just what they needed.  When I started sharing what I knew, such things as the chemical – hybrid seed approach takes 3 to 4 times more water than a natural farming approach and the plants they grew did not nurture the deep needs of our human bodies they kept saying teach us, teach us.   I was surprised especially as a woman, most men need some kind of fancy bonafides to listen to me.  I learned from Joshua that Indians have a huge amount of respect (read they are still selling themselves short) for Western ideas  When I found this out, as I am  upset by how they have sold out their own 10,000 year sustainable agriculture history,  I  made a point of asking everyone to check out  through their own hearts and observations  if what I was saying ringed true, and especially to check with their grandfathers and grandmothers.   The wealthiest of the farmers was totally organic.  His methods like the Save Farm methods are not natural farming.  They still use a lot of water and are still forcing the plants with fertilizer, albeit organic materials and according to me having to use a lot of organic pesticides and fungicides because of these practices.  He knew about natural farming and said I cannot rationalize taking less production from my farm as it would mean less wealth for my family.   It turns out I heard this sentiment a lot all over India, I have to maximize my financial gain for my family’s sake.  When I asked him with his grown son standing next to me, would you rather give your family money now or by changing your agricultural practices leave some water for your sons family.  He agreed immediately that he would rather curtail his water use.  His son agreed as well.  This was a major breakthrough for me.  Very few successful U.S. farmers would choose the future rather than present profits.  It turns out this thinking of the future (when the people actually can understand that they have a choice) they will make the choice for a future.   How inspiring and it  made me immediately decide to stay here as long as it keeps working for me to share what I know.  Wow people who will apply what they learn.  Wow, wow, wow. 

There was one farmer who had 4 acres of land who only had enough water for less than 2 acres who on the spot offered to let me use 2 acres of his land for my demonstration project. 

I then went off to Navdanya farm which is Vandanna Shiva’s project up in Dehradun, maybe 2300 killometers on the train.   This time I went on the 3 AC train and the journie went well, aside from being 6 hours late arriving in delhi and me missing my connection to Dehrarun.   Dr. Shiva was visiting there when I was so I got to connect with her again.  She has about 20 projects which will correlate with mine.  She has seed banks all over India collecting and growing open pollinated seeds.  She has a team working on getting more trees on every farm, but their goals seems to be more like 1/8 to ¼ of the project.  But still they are researching what are the best trees for water conservation and the yields in terms of fruits for the states that they are working in.  On  the farm there at Dehradun they have with their organic practices raised the level of the water by 50 feet.  They are not having severe water problems in their area.  They fed us from the organic produce of the land and a week of great eating was wonderful for my body.

I met the woman in charge of the Maharastra project for Navdanya.  They are in the area where so many farmers were committing suicide because the promises of all the increased productivity did not pan out so the farmers who had borrowed money on their land to buy the chemical products to make the hybrid seeds work lost their land.  In this area the water problems are huge.   They have more than 140 farmers who are committing to change to organic.  Navdanya offers them all the free advice and seeds they need to make the conversion.   Farmers have already learned to do dry land farming and she was excited to work with us.  I also found farmers in Karnataka where I did a meditation retreat who could no longer afford the next bore well who wanted to work with us.  There is also an activist named anna who did a big water conservation project in this state 30 years ago and the water is still holding well there.